Immersion Therapy
by mosylu
Summary: She is Lois Lane, dammit, and she's not afraid of anything. Especially not a shower. Episode tag for 4.13, "Recruit." Gen, no pairings 'cept if you squint.


(A/N) This came about when I was watching 4.13, Recruit, and Lois almost drowns while paralyzed by the meteor-freak-of-the-week. I got to thinking how terrifying that must have been, especially for somebody who's so used to saving herself. And, yes, I know this isn't how immersion therapy really works. But for Lois, it does.

Immersion Therapy

Lois Lane was pretty sure she stank.

No, she _knew_ she stank; the proof was in the wafts of air that puffed up from her clothes as she peeled them off her body and dropped them to the floor of the Kent bathroom.

To be fair, she'd had a long day, moving all her earthly belongings out of the dorm at Met U and slinking off campus in shame, then driving the three hours out to Smallville and conning Clark out of his own bed.

She giggled to herself. She knew she could have stopped in at the Talon and asked Martha Kent directly. "Mrs. K, can I crash at your place for awhile?"

The answer would have been "Yes, of course, we'd love to have you, dear, do you need anything?" She also could have found Mr. K out in the back forty or wherever, asked the same question, and gotten pretty much the same answer, and probably an offer to talk to her father as well.

But she'd told herself she wanted the fun of manipulating the oversized bundle of naivete and plaid that was Clark Kent. How far did she have to get into her sob story before he gave in to his own basic decency? Not that far, it turned out. She hadn't even gotten to the part where she was selling herself on the streets of Metropolis. Kind of a disappointment, really.

The truth was - and she could admit it in darkest confidence only to herself - that she'd wanted to talk to Clark. She'd wanted to see him smile at her, to hear the timbre of his voice. She'd wanted to stand near him and feel how strong and solid he was before she went and did the thing she knew she had to do.

It was fairly annoying to realize this. He was just a guy, and a doofy guy at that. She was Lois Lane and she didn't need anybody.

But it had been his hands that had fished her out of the drink, his arms that had supported her unresponsive body. It had been his voice that had promised, "S'okay, you're gonna be okay," and for the first time since the water had started closing over her head, she'd believed that.

The reason she stank was because she hadn't gotten in a shower since Clark Kent had pulled her, half-paralyzed, out of the sewer.

She'd tried. Oh, man, she'd tried. She'd stood in the hospital bathroom, naked and whimpering, while the water rattled on the tile floor of the shower stall. She'd tried in her own dorm showers, mid-morning while all the other girls were at the classes she wasn't enrolled in anymore. She'd sniveled like a homesick private who wanted his mama.

It was dumb. If anything, she should have been terrified of baths, the water rising up higher and higher. But she remembered lying on her back, staring up at the water thundering down on her. Unable to move. Unable to save herself.

And she just couldn't do it.

Both times, she'd eventually given up, wiped herself down with a wet washcloth, and gotten dressed again. But that was only so effective, and honestly if she didn't get a handle on this now she was going to spend the rest of her life with an Achilles' heel, and everybody knew what had happened to _that_ poor sucker.

The bathroom was quiet and warm, aglow with the yellow-white light of mid-afternoon. Everything was in the same place as it had been in the month she'd stayed here. Soap, shampoo, toothbrushes. Cozy. Familiar.

As an army brat, she could make herself at home anyplace within a week. But this was one of the few she'd ever actually come back to.

She took a deep breath. "Okay, Lois. You can do this."

She reached out and turned the shower on. And then it was like she was in the sewer again, her whole body frozen in place. Can't help yourself, Lois Lane, tough girl who always made sure you could kick or punch or bluff or drink her way out of any situation.

You can't help yourself.

Her eyes dropped to the bathtub. She'd forgotten to take the plug out and the bottom was slowly filling with water, the shower pattering into it.

She could take a bath. She could let this be and take a bath, something neither the hospital nor the dorm had offered as an option. She could tackle it tomorrow.

And then what? Tomorrow she'd put it off, again, and there she was with that Achilles' heel.

She swore under her breath, the filthiest words she could think of in all the languages she knew. It took awhile. She'd made a point of learning how to swear in the local tongue of every place she'd ever lived, because it came in handy.

She lifted one foot. Wobbled. Put it down.

She lifted the other. Put it down, but this time in the bathtub. The warm water closed over her foot.

The water in the sewer had been cold, cold, cold, and floating with things best not thought of. Which were probably still in her hair - ugh. She needed to kill this weakness.

She took several shaky breaths that _were not_ sobs, and lifted her other foot. The change in her balance swayed her forward, into the spray, and she threw out her hands to clutch the wall before she collapsed.

Her hair soaked up the water and it ran down over her body and _this is good, see? Good, clean, warm water. Not sewer water._

She shivered under the steam.

Her knees gave out and she sank down into the accumulating water, palms squeaking slightly against the tile. It was up to about two inches, the kind of bath she used to run for Lucy when her sister was tiny and couldn't be trusted not to drown herself.

Three inches now.

_Yes, the water is rising and it's still pouring down but you are not there, you are here, and here is good and safe and warm. And you can move._

Her legs had gotten all twisted under her body, but she unfolded herself, stretching her legs out until her toes bumped the front of the tub. She wiggled them. The classic question of hospital staff, to see how much command you had over your own body. _Can you move your toes for me, Lois?_

She wiggled her toes again. Her eyes stung.

She breathed. In, out. She stretched out her arms, flexed her legs. She was in water and she could move and it was all right, she would be all right.

Her bangs dripped into her eyes. She tipped her head back, letting the water patter onto her face.

Yes, there was more water coming but it was okay. She could stop it anytime she wanted. Just reach her hand up and crank the handle.

After a long time, she looked down. Her hands were braced next to her hips, on the bottom of the tub. The water was halfway to her elbows, just closing over her knees.

If she was going to beat this, she was going to have to do it all the way.

She scooted her butt down the tub until she could lay all the way back. She had to fold up her legs to fit, exposing her knees to the cooler air, but her knees weren't the problem.

She took a deep breath and dropped her head under the water, resting it against the bottom of the tub.

Her ears filled up, cutting out all sound except the slosh of water. The world narrowed to a circle of wavering light, broken up into a pebbled surface by the drops from the shower. Her hair drifted around her like seaweed.

Her chest started to ache with holding carbon dioxide in when her lungs wanted oxygen.

Anytime. She could sit up anytime. Her body was her own.

Her lungs started to burn.

She burst out of the water with a great gasp, sucking in air. She sat with her knees folded up to her chest, the shower dumping water down on her head, and sobbed helplessly.

She cried because she'd been frozen, because after a lifetime of self-sufficiency she hadn't been able to come to her own rescue.

She cried because she'd fought so hard to get into college and she'd screwed it up within months, like she screwed up everything in her life. She cried because her father had finally, completely given up on her.

She cried because she had exactly 835.57 in her bank account, which sounded like a lot until she remembered she wasn't a mooch and she was going to insist on paying the Kents rent. But she didn't know how she was going to replenish her funds, and the thought of peddling french fries or coffee sort of made her want to throw up. But for real, who else was going to hire a screw-up who'd washed out of college?

She cried because she'd almost died, and she cried because she hadn't.

When she was all cried out, she sat quietly. The water was deeper now, almost to the lip of the tub. She shouldn't let it overflow. She might not do chores or mind curfew, but geez, there were some lines a guest - or a renter - didn't cross.

She reached out and yanked the plug out of the drain. The water started to recede. She got to her feet and climbed out of the tub. Dripping onto the bath mat, she wiped her eyes and blew her nose with toilet paper.

Well. _That_ was over anyway.

She surveyed herself, the queen of the drowned rats with swollen red eyes and a runny nose. She hiked up her chin and threw back her shoulders. Maybe she hadn't been able to save herself back in that sewer, but she wasn't paralyzed now. Her father had kicked her to the curb, but she'd found a tentative place to land, and she was going to keep it. She was Lois Lane, dammit, and she was going to save herself.

The shower was still running. She took a deep breath, climbed back in, and reached for the soap.

She'd just rinsed herself clean when the door rattled under a certain farmboy's version of a knock. "Lois?"

"What?" she yelled back.

"You said you wouldn't be more than half an hour. It's been forty-five minutes, you're going to use up all the hot water!"

"So what?"

A strange hesitation. "Are you okay?"

She turned off the water. "Yeah," she whispered.

"What?"

"I'm fine, Smallville!"

"Really?"

She climbed out of the tub and surveyed her clothes. No way was she putting those back on. "Yeah, except can you do me a favor?"

"What?" he said warily.

She smiled at herself in the bathroom mirror. "Can you get me one of your shirts?"

FINIS


End file.
